Bouncer

How much are we willing to sacrifice or to risk for the sake of convenience? If we're not careful, we could very well be handing over our digital lives to strangers with one single tap. This is the frightening situation painted by Craig Young from security firm Tripwire in his talk last Saturday at the Defcon security conference in Las Vegas.

After some pretty poor publicity surrounding the security of the Android Market, Google introduced the Bouncer scanning system for a more effective means of securing incoming apps. Of course, that doesn't account for the ignorance of some Android users, which at least one malware distributor is taking advantage of... and using Facebook as an alternate delivery mechanism. As a method of getting around the Android Market, it's actually kind of ingenious - in a sneaky sort of way, of course.

We're not going to lie, when Google introduced its "Bouncer" solution to the malware problem evident in the Android Market - it was comforting to know they would take antivirus protection into their own hands. Well, it seems that may not make a lick of difference for some rare cases. Professor Xuxian Jiang at North Carolina State University have recently found a new form of malware threatening Android's security.